Some time ago, my wife had pulled an old record-console from the alley. It was completely wobbly and falling apart, and the finish was a bright obnoxious orange color. We tolerated it for quite some time as it some-what matched our bright-orange suite-case style record player. However, we have since acquired a new record-player and wanted to refinish the console to better match the player and the room.
So, I stripped down the pieces and sanded each one. I had to repair some of the parts as they had cracked and torn. I re-stained the pieces as well and after the stain dried, I covered them with amber shellac to give it a nice glow. The finish took better to the inner surfaces. The outer surfaces still clung to some of the old orange-ish color. I was trying not to over-sand the show-sides, and perhaps I didn’t sand enough. In the end, it still looks better, and the re-building of the console will ensure it stands straight and last another 50 years or so.
Another cold winter in Minnesota and my workshop is unfortunately in an external garage with little heating capability. So, much like the previous year, I was unable to do much woodworking over the freezing months of winter. However, I did manage to finish a couple small projects during the few days where it was tolerable to be in the workshop.
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Holdfast Clamps
The first project was finishing a set of holdfast clamps. I got the design from Paoson’s WoodworkingYouTube channel and website. I highly recommend checking it out, he has some great well-designed projects. These set of holdfast clamps work perfect in my custom dog-holes on my homemade workbench. They hold boards tightly to the bench for cutting and planing.
The clamps are made with a 3/4″ solid steel rod that I painstakingly cut with a hacksaw and smoothed with sandpaper. The top is red-oak with a gently curve and the bottom fastener is also red oak. The mechanism is a bit complex and I’ll refer you to Paoson’s website to check out the details.
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Phone Holder
As a quick side project, I created a phone holder for a friend of mine. He often uses his phone for video during our gaming sessions and has been propping it up on various objects on his desk over the past year, never getting the angle quite right, or it’d fall out of place with a slight bump. I made this simple holder for him out of spare poplar scraps and special strips of black walnut for that added detail. The mechanism is simple and the finish is amber shellac, left a bit tacky to help grip his phone on the holder.
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Wall Emblem
I also threw together a beautiful emblem for my wall. It show-cases the natural beauty of three woods: walnut, poplar, and red oak. I love how the natural wavy lines in the red oak creates a hazy sun, and the straight walnut bestows a mountain’s sturdiness.
As the cold weather looms and access to my workshop becomes more limited, there were a few more projects I needed to finish. My wife and I had been working on organizing and cleaning out basement. Since we moved into our home four years ago, various amounts of junk and empty cardboard boxes had begun to accumulate in the forgotten corners of our basement. We went in and cleaned everything out and wanted to make a more intuitive storage space. Part of that solution included some simple storage racks, a pantry, and shelf.
Storage Racks
A built a new storage rack to hold plastic totes. The joinery provides strong support. The wood was mostly old 2×4 construction lumber and various other extra pieces I had lying around, like cedar planks from my fence, long strips of OSB, and long pine boards.
If you compare the construction of the new storage rack to the one I built in Nov 2018, it’s quite different.
While the old rack still holds things, its a bit wobbly and doesn’t handle shearing forces well. It was one of the first things I built before I started my woodworking journey. It was after that project I knew there was a lot more I needed to learn about woodworking, and over that winter I started watching lots of videos and reading lots of articles about woodworking, so that by Spring 2019, I was ready to start my journey.
It’s amazing to see how far I have come.
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Electronic Racks
I made two small holding caddies for our home router and fiber-optics routing box. It’s nice to have these up and out of the way, and all their cable neatly together.
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Pantry and Shelf
On the other side of our basement, in our “laundry” room / pantry. We had a large wire rack for storing our pantry overflow items. It was a poor solution, as small glass bottles had trouble staying on the rack and it was an ugly sight seeing all the items haphazardly on the shelves. To solve this, I built a large pantry with doors to hide the food items and shelves below for larger items.
Additionally, I added a mini-shelf to make cans and smaller items easier to see.
The final piece was a large basic shelf-cabinet for storing sodas, beers, and other treats.
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Lightning
I also updated the lightning in the storage room with the same LED lights I put in my workshop. Now I have a bright workspace if I ever want to take a project inside. Perfect for the winter!
I took some time off from woodworking after building the large bookcase. I need to step away and not have a massive project lingering over my head for a few months. It was nice to spend my weekends working on music again.
However, as the weather begins to cool again, I’ve gravitated back to the shop and put together a few garden projects.
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Side-Garden Trellis
I loved the first garden trellis so much, I decided to add another, smaller one at the entrance to our side garden. What my wife refers to as the “secret garden”. The support and arches were built the same as the larger garden trellis. However, I added a more decorative crosshatch for the sides.
I also built a new door mechanism using a steel rod and chunks of spare cedar. It is far easier to open and close than the metallic ones.
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Garden Fence
I also through together a quick garden fence with spare wood. It’s mostly just to define the space and keep the dog out. If I start seeing rabbits in there, I’ll probably put back the chicken-wire and attach it to the back of the wooden fence.
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Garden Obelisk
The final easy project was a garden obelisk. It was thrown together with spare lumber. The top is a piece that intended for our kitchen redesign that we decide not to use. Its the perfect spot for a globe-shaped finial.
I currently have a massive bookshelf in my room. It is from IKEA and it is grossly overloaded. The particleboard structure is buckling and the makeshift plywood back only serves as a stop-gap measure from the entire piece from falling apart, and scattering my collection of reference books.
I knew I’d want to build my own bookshelf to replace it. I spent a great deal of time scanning the internet for varying designs to try and find the right style for my room. I opened up Sketchup and began designing the structure and style of the new bookshelf.
I liked the idea of having a few drawers to hide clutter and nick-knacks and cabinet doors to hide my less appealing textbooks and larger reference books. It would be a two-piece structure. The top bookcase has most of the shelves reinforced by dado’d shelves, likely reinforced with small finish nails.
I decided I was going to paint the piece in the end, to go with the white furniture in the room already. That simplified my wood choice to using poplar, which is great for paint and considerably cheaper than other hardwoods.
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The Lower Cabinet
I first set up the aprons for the lower cabinet with some poplar scrap. These would be hidden from view anyway, but need to serve a strong support for the whole structure.
The next portion of the project was making an large number of wide boards. I had purchased 1×6 boards and 1×4 boards to edge-join together for the 12-14″ boards I needed for the project. I only have so many good clamps, so this process took a couple weeks before each board I needed was put together.
Eventually, I have a growing stack of wide boards for the bookcase.
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After some trial and error, I created a large cross-cut sled for my tablesaw to cut the wide boards with perfect 90-degree ends.
The sled was also perfect for helping me cut the dados required to fit all the pieces together.
Drawers and Doors
With the frame of the lower cabinet assembled, I attached the tabletop and started fitting the drawers.
The drawer fronts were a but trickier. I had to add some cock-beading to the edges to give it a fancier look. I used my 3/16″ cove bit on a piece of scrap poplar. I’d run it through the router to form the edge, then cut it off with the bandsaw. After doing that about 12 times, I had enough cock-beading for the edges of all the drawers. I made a small miter-box jig for the tiny pieces and cut them with my Japanese handsaw with perfect 45-degree miters. A little glue held them on.
In the end, the cock-beading looks great on the edges of the drawer fronts.
The bottom portion was starting to look good when all put together.
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Top Shelves
The top of the bookshelf was pretty straight forward, as it was just a large box with some dados to hold some center shelves for extra stability. It came together easily. I added the decorative top face, which was cut easily with my bandsaw. The arcs were traces from an old paint can, giving me nice circular shapes.
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Painting
The painting for this project was pure chaos and frustration. This was because my HVLP pressure sprayer I had bought last year was not working properly. It could not get enough material out and seemed like it would just take forever. I ended up using a mini paint roller on the whole thing combined with a standard paint brush for the tricky parts. I did two coats on most parts, sanding with 220 grit sandpaper between coats, then ending with a 1000 grit steel wool pad to get a smooth finished surface.
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Assembly
It was a bit tricky getting both pieces into the final space and stacking the top to the bottom. But in the end, it came out looking beautiful and elegant.
I’ve been working on my large bookshelf and I needed a method to get clean, 90-degree cuts on large, wide boards. I had first tried trimming off the ends with a hand-held router. But ran into some issues, one of which included cutting into the side of my thumb. In the end, I decided to build a large cross-cut sled to bring the boards across my tablesaw with plenty of support.
I used a wide 4×4 piece of 1/2″ plywood for the base and a sturdy hardwood fence that was carefully angled for perfect 90 degree cuts to the tablesaw-blade. Unseen in the photos, are the runners underneath that slide perfectly through the miter slots on the tablesaw top.
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Shooting Board
I also through together a little shooting board for trimming end-grain with my hand-planes.
I’ve gotten numerous compliments on our moon-gate at the entrance to our front yard. I love the rounded design and wanted to add more rounded design elements to our front yard. Last Spring, I decided to throw some tomatoes and melons into our front garden, since the bushes (azaleas and blueberries) that we planted there would need a few years before they filled the space out. I didn’t want to waste all that good sun. The plants did really well, this was prime solar real-estate after all. Unfortunately, the tomatoes and melons, as they do, grew all over the place. It was hard to keep them to the crude mini-trellises I had threw together for them.
I decided I wanted a permanent trellis to grow vine flowers and vine vegetables in the front yard. I sketched out some ideas, and like usual, scanned the internet for ideas. I then had a radical idea. I could build a massive arch trellis that matched the moon-gate and extended over our walk to the house. I made some measurements and decided this would work well. It also could be used to grow some roses up front, something my wife really wanted.
I was a little worried, since one line of the posts was right over my water lines. However, we live in Minnesota, so our water pipes are typically 6-7 feet below the ground at street level. Since my house was on a little hill, I was already 2-3 feet above street level. I made some measurements where the lines came into the floor of my basement and realized I had plenty of clearance for those pipes. So, I began to dig some posts deep into our front yard right along the walk.
I cut the posts down to ensure the same height for all six of them. The posts were then cemented in using some quick-dry post mix and let to rest for a couple days.
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The next goal was to cut out the arch templates using the measurements I had made between the posts. I used the same method I had for the moon-gate (check that out HERE). There was going to be three arches, so I had three different templates for the slight differences in distance between posts.
The arches were attached to the posts using a series of pocket-holes and waterproof ceramic-coated pocket-screws. The posts were made of ground-treated wood, while everything else was composed of western red cedar (matching our front fence and moon-gate). Soon I had all three arches installed.
This already created a beautiful symmetry with a columnated path to the house and gate. I knew I had gotten the heights just right.
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The next phase was adding the horizontal strips that would provide scaffolding for the plants to climb. These were 1″ thick cedar board strips cut on my bandsaw from the same 5/8″ thick western red-cedar boards we had used for the front fence.
The upper portion of the strips were quite hard to install, I spent far more time on top of the ladder than I would have liked. The strips were screwed into place on each end, with two strips lining up on the center posts. The holes had to all by predrilled to ensure the ends wouldn’t split. I cut the excess off with a Japanese cross-cut saw.
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After cutting all the strips and smoothing out the ends, it looked gorgeous. The long lines focus your attention to the center of the moon-gate from one end…
…or the door of the house from the other end.
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Now, all it needed was a garden bed on the southern side for vines to grow within. Since we have a dog, I knew I’d need clear boundaries and decided to build a raised box.
It is quite a welcome addition to our front yard and I cannot wait to start growing vines up and along its curving structure.
With Spring around the corner, my wife was gearing up for upcoming races. Running has long been a passion of hers and she has participated in numerous races over the years, which means a large collection of medals. I was recently tasked with creating a storage implement for these medals.
The project was simple, another poplar board cut to width and all edges slightly rounded with a sander. Five 3/4″ holes cut half-way through the board with a Forstner bit, then 3/4″ dowels inserted with glue into the round mortise like a tenon. I had predrilled screw-holes in the backs of the dowels and board, so that I could reinforce them with a screw in the back of the board. I used the same set-up for my shed’s bike-rack system, so I was certain these would be strong enough to hold a row of medals.
The board was the attached to the studs in my wife’s room, allowing the glory of her accomplishments glitter on the wall.
This was a simple project to create a perfectly-sized utensil holder for our odd-sized drawer. I never liked how our current one bounced around in the drawer. I wanted something that had a tighter fit and was better organized than our current mess.
The sides were thin slices of poplar (leftover from the kitchen cabinet project). I cut them with my bandsaw then smoothed them out with the sander. I cut out notches to create a tight fight with the crossbar. The ends I left as simple butt-joints to not overcomplicate the fit. I also expect the drawer itself to help support the edges.
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Utensil Shelf
This additional was simply a board made into a shelf, but it added a nice addition to our kitchen. The board was poplar stained with a couple coats of amber shellac. Combined with some cast iron holders and utensil hooks from IKEA and the project was finished.
My wife and I love our house, but there are definitely some things we love more than others. One thing in particular was the kitchen cabinets. The doors had a cheap, flimsy feel to them, they made a racket opening and closing them. The drawers are cheaply made and get stuck as the wood slides on bloated wood rails. It was in need of an upgrade.
I’ve been wanting to redo the cabinets for quite some time, but I knew I had to get better at woodworking before I would be able to do the doors myself. For the style that we wanted, I also needed a reliable set of rail and stile router bits and panel cutters. To use those, I’d need a reliable router table. Thankfully, I finished my router table in May (see it here).
The process of putting together the cabinet doors was a long one. It took weeks to ensure all the measurements were exact and figure out how I was going to lay out the design. Even more time to glue each piece up, shape them, then painting, then the arduous task of fitting each piece in place.
Design
First, I made the measurements of the existing cabinets and drawers as best I could. The new doors would be overhang doors (rather than the half-overlay ones), so they didn’t have to be quite as precise. I laid out all the measurements into SketchUp and labeled each piece to help me map the progress.
I then calculated from the measurements the appropriate dimensions of each insert panel, rail, and stile for the cabinet doors along with the drawer fronts.
Shaping
I ordered some beautiful poplar wood from a local hardwood dealer. I was quite excited, as I had never worked with poplar. From my first test cuts with the wood, I found its tight grain structure to be much more satisfying to work and shape than the heavy grain of red oak.
I cut out each rail and stile using my fancy router table. The poplar wood cut quite smooth and I ended up with a nice, neat stack for each door, labelled appropriately.
Next, I moved to the panels. I had to glue up a bunch of segments to make the panel sizes I required. This took some time, as each panel needed most of my clamps, so I was only able to do one or two panels a day and let the glue dry overnight.
I then cut the panels with my very wide panel-cutting router bit. I love the stepped sides of the panels.
The panels needed quite a bit of sanding and smoothing, but I decided I’d do that after I glued them up. The next process of gluing up the full doors also took quite some time. Like with the panels themselves, I could only do one or two each day.
Painting
The painting process was a lot more work than I anticipated. I had a bought a HVLP sprayer earlier in the year and was excited to use it. It did speed up the painting time itself, and ensured a more even coat. However, I had to use about three coats, with plenty of sanding in between to ensure a perfect smooth final texture.
It helped to dilute the paint with about 20% water. This allowed it to spray better. Especially since this was a high-enamel cabinet paint. This of course, means I needed more coats, three seemed to do the trick. I sanded lightly with 220 grit sandpaper between each coat.
Given the size of my shop and limited outdoor space, the painting process took a couple weeks to get both sides of each piece. I then let the pieces sit and cure for at least a week to ensure that there was no tackiness left on the surfaces.
Fitting
I thought that once I attached the hardware I was done. Mission accomplished. It turns out that fitting the pieces so they look nice and square on the frames is quite a process. I spent quite a few days just trying to get them to sit right, making micro-adjustments. In many cases, I had to add strips of wood to the side of the frames to avoid in glaring gaps. Two of the doors required shaving off a 1/16th of an inch from each side so that they’d fit nicely together. After all this, I have a new appreciation for cabinet work, and why it can cost thousands to have it professionally done.
My wife then painted the frames after I sanded them down. This was a bit stressful, as it felt like we had just moved in. We let the paint cure for at least a week, so our kitchen items were scattered all over.
I then added the hardware to the doors and voila! The kitchen cabinets were completed.
